


3.0

by charrotto



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Fix-It of Sorts, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Finale, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-19
Packaged: 2018-11-15 18:56:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11237160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charrotto/pseuds/charrotto
Summary: Set after the events of Return 0, fix-it of sorts.





	1. Terence Beale

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a veeeery long time since I wrote anything, but well, inspiration struck, so here we go again. Where to, I don't know, I'll add the tags as I figure it out...

**THE CIA AGENT**

 

And so, it is over.

With Samaritan reduced by the virus ICE-9 and the original machine presumably destroyed by either of them, the Northern Lights program is officially and extra-officially shut down and we go back to the way things were 10 years ago.

I’m old-school, I suppose, and Green is currently thinking that I have become to think of myself as a Men In Black agent, probably caused by the interception of an unidentified heavy object with my head. Not that she’s showing any indications of her thoughts, she has better training than that, but I know.

Not many of us old-school left around, not after Northern Lights rendered most of the research irrelevant, and certainly not after it ate the better half of our budget. Spies became assassins, assassins became corpses, and most of them were never replaced, which brings us to our current predicament: the Northern Lights era is over, and the CIA is not equipped to deal with the aftermath.

I carefully fold the newspaper by the ‘ALIEN IN NEW-YORK’ page and watch Green’s reaction with equal care. She deliberately looks at it and holds my gaze. No questioning, no hint of sarcasm in her eyes, just awaiting further instruction. That’s how they want them nowadays.

She should have stayed in the army.

But she had looked at the newspaper, which is more than can be said about the 17 agents I’ve seen before her, and at this point, I’ll take it.

Which doesn’t mean I’ll hold a sigh of resignation, of course, I think it’s best to let her know how much she still needs to improve.

The response comes in a hardening of her face so subtle and so brief it would have gone unnoticed by most interrogators.

“Very good” I say “But this is not why I called you for.”

She doesn’t acknowledge our non-verbal exchange, just… keeps waiting.

It’s disheartening, really, but she’ll have to do.

“There are men and women in this world whose natural abilities exceed those of most.” I say “Think of a safe-cracker with exceptional hearing, or a tightrope walker with preternatural balance. A natural ability, applied to a specific trained skill, makes them stand out among their peers. But of course, not all people with exceptional hearing or preternatural balance become safe-crackers or tightrope walkers. There are doctors, lawyers, taxi drivers… you name it. Some of these people choose a career in law enforcement or the military. My job is to find and evaluate such people before they are recruited by the Agency.”

She’s listening attentively, but I can tell she’s thoroughly unimpressed.

“Miss Green, you are from New-York, aren’t you?”

She yes-sir-s me with a curt nod. I refrain from sighing, she doesn’t notice.

“Have you heard of the ‘Man In A Suit’?”

“An urban legend that circulated a few years back about a vigilante who protected people in New-York.”

“Yes. The man who showed up unexpectedly, beating the crap of the bad-guys and left the scene without a wrinkle on his suit, the kind of bad-ass who walks out coolly from the scene with an explosion on his background…”

“…and a pile of kneecapped villains on the floor.”

She smiles when she says it and averts my eyes to hide her skepticism. Personally, I’m delighted to see movement in her little martial brain, but it would do no good to tell her that.

I take a file from my drawer and hand it to her.

Most agents would scan through the file and be done with it, but she actually reads the whole thing. She’s growing on me.

“So” she finally says, neatly placing the file on my desk “You think the late Detective Riley was the Man In A Suit.”

She’s curious. Good.

Well, probably not for her, considering our motto seems to be ‘curiosity killed the cat, but not before it reported back’, but she’s cautious enough to survive for an extended period of time. I give her 10 years, give or take.

“I know Detective Riley was former CIA operative John Reese, and John Reese was definitely able to do the kind of things attributed to the Man In A Suit.”

She doesn’t ask ‘former?’, but doesn’t divert with a different question either, waiting for me to elaborate instead. I may have been a little hasty with her survival odds, 5 to 7 years seems more accurate.

“Of course, our country doesn’t have the monopoly of natural talents.” I continue, turning around the newspaper towards her “Other countries have extraordinary operatives as well, and it is my job to know about them and be able to tell when one of them is or has been in ours.”

She takes the newspaper and has a very hard time keeping a straight face (which amuses me to no end), but she reads the whole article.

She needs a moment to school her features before speaking again, but she finally says:

“An alien was seen running on the wall of the building just before the cruise missile attack”

I nod.

“Not an alien, then.”

She doesn’t hide her skepticism this time. I must be growing on her.

“We don’t really know where he’s from. Somewhere in the former URSS.”

“Definitely an earthling.”

She’s joking, and I concede a snort.

“Definitely.” I say “And an extraordinary one, might I add. The guy has been around since the late 60’s, and we’ve assumed him dead or retired several times, only to see him resurface again and again.”

“Are you sure it’s the same guy?”

“Running a 100m sprint on a vertical wall is not a common skill” I move to take another file from my drawer, a much thicker one.

“No rope?”

“Three, usually.” I say, handing her the file “A primary one, from his starting point, and another two in harpoons, to change directions if needed. But you’ll get a better idea if you read the report from February ’94.”

I can see the moment she notices the name on the file, though, to be fair, anyone would have.

“He calls himself Mir?”

I will never stop enjoying the mix of mirth and perplexity the name induces.

“We do. We gave him the name before it was deorbited, of course, but you get the gist: ancient, former URSS… And bound to fall one day.”

“Is that my mission? Find Mir?” she actually looks up to the challenge, poor thing.

“No, Green. Your mission is to become me.”

She pauses. Then, she smiles.

“And not die in the process” she says.

She actually means it, and I find myself smiling in return, the first honest thing on my face since she stepped into my office.

She’s growing on me.


	2. Grace Ellsworth

**THE WIDOW**

 

When Harold first stirred, Grace looked up from her sketchbook.

She had contemplated waking him up at first, but one look at his tired face had been enough to deter her. She didn’t know what he’d been through, but she didn’t need to know what it was to know he’d been through something. That was enough for her.

He’d looked surprised when she’d told him.

He was probably right, of course. He’d probably expected her to ask at least where he’d been, but that just wasn’t her. He was alive, he was back, and, once she had gotten around the fact that he was alive (something that had taken most of the afternoon), her only question had been if he was there to stay.

He’d said yes.

She didn’t need more.

She could see that Harold was awake, bracing himself before opening his eyes.

She returned to her sketch.

It was a Saturday morning in Rome, just three weeks from Christmas, and the street was alive with café terraces and shoppers. She’d started early, drawing the lines of the street which would be the background of her painting. Then, she waited, watching, observing the proceedings and quickly sketching passer-byes that caught her attention: a waitress carrying a tray of what looked like a dozen coffees, the looks attracted by a tourist as he walked down the street wearing short sleeves in December… Right now, her eye was on a terrace were a man was struggling to hide a very large and very bright package from his daughter, while a young girl, probably the babysitter, tried to convince the child to go somewhere else.

“You’re smiling”

Grace didn’t turn around, focused on the capture of a fleeting moment in time, but her smile softened at the sound of his voice.

He didn’t say anything else either. That’s how it had always been with them: a casual silence, a companionship, an invisible string linking them together with no need for words. She would draw or paint, he would read a book or simply get lost in his thoughts. Then, one of them would move onto something different, a conversation would start out of the blue and they would end up chatting until it was too late to order take-away.

She suddenly dropped the pencil and looked at Harold with as much of a straight face as she could muster. He dropped his phone too and looked back.

“Rome will be an improvement, won’t it, Harold?”

He pretended to contemplate his answer, and finally said “Is that a reference to our late night one-dollar-pizzas, the quality of ice cream or the scenic view when we inevitably loose track of time and realize we don’t know where we are?”

“Ice cream!” she started. She couldn’t believe she’d forgot about the ice-cream. She grabbed her bag and coat, realized she was wearing her slippers and discarded them only to realize she was wearing her pajamas. When she looked back at Harold, he was watching her with a very healthy dose of mirth and puzzlement.

“Is something the matter?” he asked.

“You’ve been almost 24h in Rome and we still haven’t gotten ice cream into that sweet tooth of yours!”

At that, he laughed.

“Maybe we should consider showering first?”

“Yes we should!” she answered, unceremoniously dropping her coat and bag in the floor and marching towards the bathroom.

She didn’t register she’d done it until she was rinsing.

Then she crumpled on the floor and started to cry.

And not some dignified silent tears, no. She really wished she could do that right now, she’d done it so many times over the years, but no, today, it was big ugly sob day, and she couldn’t stop it, and Harold was going to hear it.

As if on cue, he called her through the door.

She tried to hold a sob inside, and succeeded for about three seconds before it came out with a vengeance.

And Harold came in.

Grace tried to hide herself, tried to hide her face, holding her sobs and loosing every time.

She vaguely registered the water stopping.

And then, Harold was sitting on the floor with her, holding her in his arms, and she let go.

She didn’t know how long she cried. At some point, Harold had started to cry as well, and she thought she’d gotten snot in his shirt, but it didn’t matter anymore.

Finally, she recovered enough to notice her surroundings, and when Harold twitched, she managed to get a grip of herself.

“Your leg must be hurting”

“I must admit, the position is not ideal…”

He was apologizing. Harold was too sweet for his own good.

She knocked her head with his, and stood up to help him out of the shower. She whipped her nose and washed her face, then turned to Harold.

He was a mess.

She hadn’t registered it at the time, but she’d dropped the showerhead on the floor, and it looked like Harold had gotten into a vicious fight with it before he could turn off the water. Judging by the stains on his shirt, she had indeed gotten snot on it, along with soap and wet sheets of toilet roll, which she vaguely remembered Harold had pulled into the equation at some point.

She wanted to apologize, but laughed instead.

“I’ll have you know you don’t look much better, Miss Hendricks.”

They both paused.

She hadn’t heard that name in a long time.

“I…”

“Don’t worry about it” she interrupted.

“I…”

“Harold.” She really didn’t want to talk about this now. “It’s all-right.”

She didn’t give him the chance to continue, going around the bathroom and cleaning the mess they’d made, joking about how jealous she was of his ability for silent crying and rinsing herself properly before ushering him into the shower and making a run for the door. Before she could reach it, Harold called out to her.

“Grace”

He sounded sad, and she turned around with a watery smile.

“Yes?”

“I did notice your apartment is unusually neat”

She could feel the tears coming again, so she pretended to fix her towel and turned to the door. She tried her best to sound cheerful.

“Get a shower, we’ll get you some ice cream.”

As she closed the door behind her, she slid to the floor and rested her head on her knees.

She was exhausted.

She knew what he’d meant, of course. She’d always been messy, the kind of person whose flat featured small mountains of clothing, books haphazardly thrown on the floor and a precarious pile of dishes on the sink. Harold, on the other hand, liked to have everything clean and proper. He’d almost had a heart attack the first time he went to her place.

But everyone grieves in their own way, and Grace had taken to mimicking Harold’s habits. She had become somewhat of a neat freak, taken an interest in ornithology and was on first name basis with the girls at the ice cream parlor. She didn’t even notice she was doing it anymore. Her grief had become a part of her, and now…

She was happy. She was happy to have him back. But those tears, they were grief.


End file.
